Is this really true about the left?

Vox: Sarah Jeong Was Just Talking The Way Most People On The Left Talk About White People

Earlier today I wrote that I wasn’t particularly concerned about Sarah Jeong or her job but I was somewhat worried about what the left’s shrugging indifference to her racist tweets said about their collective mindset. I also quoted from an Andrew Sullivan piece in which he argued that the left was redefining “racism” to mean something closer to “white supremacy,” i.e. something that only whites by definition can be guilty of engaging in. Here’s Sullivan:

The alternative view — that of today’s political left — is that Jeong definitionally cannot be racist, because she’s both a woman and a racial minority. Racism against whites, in this neo-Marxist view, just “isn’t a thing” — just as misandry literally cannot exist at all. And this is because, in this paradigm, racism has nothing to do with a person’s willingness to pre-judge people by the color of their skin, or to make broad, ugly generalizations about whole groups of people, based on hoary stereotypes. Rather, racism is entirely institutional and systemic, a function of power, and therefore it can only be expressed by the powerful — i.e., primarily white, straight men. For a nonwhite female, like Sarah Jeong, it is simply impossible.

Vox’s Zack Beauchamp has written a lengthy response to Sullivan and also to NR’s David French. His first line of argument is, ‘hey, Jeong didn’t mean any of this stuff literally.”

The problem here, though, is assuming that Jeong’s words were meant literally: that when Jeong wrote “#cancelwhitepeople,” for example, she was literally calling for white genocide. Or when she said “white men are bullshit,” she meant each and every white man is the human equivalent of bull feces.

Wow, what an insight. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that no one who read “white men are bullshit” thought Jeong was envisioning a feces metamorphosis.

To anyone who’s even passingly familiar with the way the social justice left talks, this is just clearly untrue. “White people” is a shorthand in these communities, one that’s used to capture the way that many whites still act in clueless and/or racist ways. It’s typically used satirically and hyperbolically to emphasize how white people continue to benefit (even unknowingly) from their skin color, or to point out the ways in which a power structure that favors white people continues to exist.

Yes, we understand that all of this is essentially an in-group way of saying, “white people are bad.” In fact, Beauchamp has just conceded one of the points Sullivan made, “Scroll through left-Twitter and you find utter incredulity that demonizing white people could in any way be offensive. That’s the extent to which loathing of and contempt for ‘white people’ is now background noise on the left.”

To be really clear, in case Zack Beauchamp is reading this, “demonizing” does not mean literally turning white people into demons with tails and horns. It means bad-mouthing them as a group. The question is whether it’s a problem to have lots of people on the left constantly saying “white people are bad.”

Beauchamp then moves on to agree with Sullivan’s other point, i.e. the left doesn’t consider it possible to be racist against whites and therefore calling them bad as a group is not an issue:

What makes these quasi-satirical generalizations about “white people” different from actual racism is, yes, the underlying power structure in American society. There is no sense of threat associated with Jeong making a joke about how white people have dog-like opinions. But when white people have said the same about minorities, it has historically been a pretext for violence or justification for exclusionary politics…

It’s absurd to pretend, given centuries of racialized oppression, that the phrases “white people” and “black people” can be swapped in a sentence without profoundly changing the meaning.

Fair enough but if we’re going to play this power dynamic game can we at least note that Sarah Jeong is not black? Asians have had a rough time in American history but they are in a very different place in today’s America than black Americans. The average household incomeof Asian Americans is higher than it is for whites or any other group. Asians are disproportionately accepted to top schools like Harvard (where Jeong attended). So even if you accept the premise that there are some groups of people in a position to be badmouthing white people as a group, it’s not clear Sarah Jeong is one of those people. And, no, a couple of racial slurs on Twitter don’t make her a victim. Everyone gets garbage like that on Twitter because Twitter sucks (though I think it’s true women, on the right and left, get it worse than men).

Second related point: You can tell someone that they’re part of a privileged group and criticize them for it, but the problem with generalizing so broadly is that there are plenty of white people out there who are not doing particularly well in terms of wealth, or drug addiction, or life expectancy at the moment. Those folks shouldn’t be lumped in with the white titans of industry or rich frat boys or whoever else Jeong imagines her tweets were aimed at.

The real problem with Jeong’s “white men are bullshit” tweet, and all the rest, is that even if we agree it wasn’t literal and even if we use the power dynamic analysis Beauchamp favors, she has more social and economic power than a lot of the people in the group she’s attacking. Even on average that’s probably true (or will be soon enough) and certainly, to the people below the average who didn’t go to Harvard, they won’t be catching up with her ever. To them, she’s the elite punching down, not the victim punching up.

To put this in terms Jeong might appreciate, to a lot of folks she doesn’t look like an oppressed victim, just another social justice edgelord engaged in s**tposting.

Update: Guess who really thinks white men are problematic [you will have to click for yourself]:

There’s a really weird propensity for white lefties to denigrate all white people for being white. Including themselves. It’s like the self-denunciation that the Maoists required of condemned bourgeoisie prisoners. Except these lefties are voluntarily accusing themselves for being born.

Yet they never seem to do the logical thing and top themselves, thereby saving Gaia from their ebil CO2 emissions, and the colonialized masses from their embarrassing privilege. It’s seriously bonkers.

The interesting thing is the hypocrisy of the Left (though nothing unusual). On the one hand they believe that, for example, sex isn’t determined by genetics, as it’s simply a social construct. However, on the other hand, white people are all evil due to genetics, rather it being a social construct.

Yes, we understand that all of this is essentially an in-group way of saying, “white people are bad.” In fact, Beauchamp has just conceded one of the points Sullivan made, “Scroll through left-Twitter and you find utter incredulity that demonizing white people could in any way be offensive. That’s the extent to which loathing of and contempt for ‘white people’ is now background noise on the left.

It was always thus, because we don’t give a shit and never have. Sticks and stones….. and all that, remember. If we start crowing about it now, in this context, we stop winning!

The left are diseased. We need to find a cure that doesn’t require propelling lead at high speed; perhaps free helicopter flights?

I must say I actually feel sorry for this poor deluded communist (NOT neo marxist). She has nothing new to say as she sings from the same communist song book as all the rest. All the rantings and ramblings from the left should be seen for what they are, junk! Poor hard done by thing, having to endure such deprivation as attending Harvard University. She is just one more lunatic lefty like movie stars in their multi million dollar mansions, pontificating about everything “they” don’t like. Poor little petals with their truckloads of money telling everyone else what to do. I think they are running out of ideas and have to come up with a new idea to attack; someone, anyone! Doesn’t matter if its real or not as long as it is for their cause. I think they should be given as little oxygen as possible.

The “Progressives” are perfectly happy to re-categorize Asians are “white” when it suits them. If Jeong has any brains are all she knows they will come for her before too much longer, so hopefully she has a plan for that day.

Maybe it’s time for an International Thank a White Man day each year. Not just for inventing most worthwhile things, and thinking most worthwhile thoughts, but just for ordinary things. Like paying the most taxes, doing the most dangerous jobs, and suffering the most occupational deaths.

RE: The spin from Yahoo
Where was it that I read today that the left has been busily redefining racism to equate with white supremacism, in other words to mean that only white people can be capable of racism? Whoever said that was right. Namby conservatives, libertarians, and classical liberals need to step up the fight.

I can understand this girl’s actions, they are a way of shouting look at me, look at me. She has had enormous success with It since we are all looking and NYT even gave her a prestigious job for it.

The real villain here is the NYT, they rewarded bad behaviour which means that there will be more of it. There will be not just more people denouncing white people but advocating their extinction in ever more extreme ways.

Actually if you listen to them speak, all they are doing is recitation. They are actually not thinking and thus debating. Instead of screaming when experiencing cognitive dissonance, they seem to slow down the repartee and recite standard phrases.

But look at their eyes, and you will discover that there’s nothing inside.

They are simply biological robots and to change their opinions requires re-education.

Lefties are easily recognisable because there’s no sparkle in the eyes, just overwhelming dullness.

MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle mocked Americans’ aversion to socialism Friday during a discussion panel on effective midterm messaging for the Democratic Party.
Ruhle told her guests that a “powerful, nuanced argument” for socialist policies could come from candidates promising to “take care of the cost of health care” — yet, she lamented, too many Americans never get that for in the conversation. “Oh my gosh! Socialist! I can’t have that!” she exclaimed, putting on a parodic Midwestern accent. “It’s gonna take all my money!”

She was joined by Financial Times (FT) U.S Editor Brendan Greeley, who described socialism as a desirable and “not radical.”

She’s not a victim of anything except the New York Times editors/owners hatred of Donald Trump as they encourage her mental derangement and dump her when she goes too far and needs to be admitted to a psychiatric facility.

I like to think “there are none so blind as those who cannot see” will stay the test of time and outbreaks of stupidity. We should hope for more Jeong’s turning up at the NY Times. Heavens we should crowd-fund a talent scout program just for them. Send in appropriate CV’s. It’s heading the way of Faufax. Just ignore it and let it slide.

“Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,” as the Apostle Paul said of the pagan Romans. In repudiating Christianity to become a member of the “educated left wing elite,” Ms. Jeong has made her bargain with the Devil, and the New York Times. But I repeat myself.

She is dressed like a white woman, has a painted face like a white woman, has dyed her hair like a white woman. Essentially she wants to look and think like a white. Yet she condemns whites. I wonder if she is suffering from an inferiority complex. If so many things suck because of white men, what is she doing in their country. She should go back to her own country. She is a real b…st artist.

Ultimately, I suspect that’s what Jeong was really doing. She doesn’t actually hate white people; she was demonstrating that she subscribes to The Cause. Of course, it says something about this strain of leftism that one of the easiest ways to prove you’re a devotee is to make mean-spirited, troll-ish generalizations about other people.

Only Jeong knows what she is really doing. All anyone else can do is judge her by what she says and does. And she sounds racist. Pontificating about “the cause” is just a diversion.